By asking nicely, we were sent some pictures from IDF of Gigabyte's upcoming X79 motherboards, well, at least four out of the five models we understand the company is going to launch come November. That said, these aren't the final boards, thanks to Intel's last minute SCU errata, so Gigabyte will have to implement a few changes before these boards hit retail.

By asking nicely, we were sent some pictures from IDF of Gigabyte's upcoming X79 motherboards, well, at least four out of the five models we understand the company is going to launch come November. That said, these aren't the final boards, thanks to Intel's last minute SCU errata, so Gigabyte will have to implement a few changes before these boards hit retail.

Starting at the top we have the G1.Assassin 2 X79 and the biggest surprise here really is the re-designed heatsinks which are much less in your face than the current models. That said, Gigabyte might very well change this before the board is launching, but we'll just have to wait and see if we'll get a gun themed heatsink or not on the final boards. Expected features include a Killer NIC, Creative X-Fi audio and 3-way SLI and CrossFireX support. We also spotted a Marvell controller for a pair of eSATAp (eSATA/USB combo) ports and a Fresco Logic USB 3.0 host controller on the board. One feature we couldn't figure out what it's for is the blue and green button on the rear below the 4GHz overclock button, although it could be some kind of BIOS switch to select between the primary and secondary BIOS.

Next up we have the GA-X79-UD7 and as you might've noticed from the colour scheme and the Gigabyte OC logo on the chipset heatsink, this is the next generation overclocking board from Gigabyte, despite the model name. It's pretty clear that Gigabyte has crammed in a few extra power phases on this board and we're also looking at tantalum capacitors. The board has four x16 PCI Express slots and if you have a chassis with eight or more rear expansion slots, you can fit four graphics cards to this board thanks to a sensible slot layout. Gigabyte didn't add any eSATA ports to the UD7, but once again we noticed a couple of Fresco Logic USB 3.0 host controller.

For those wanting to use more than four DIMMs the GA-X79-UD5 is the way to go, as this board sports a total of eight DIMM slots. This is a more well-rounded motherboard in terms of features, although it still has space for up to three graphics cards. Around the back we're looking at one eSATAp and one eSATA port as well as a pair of USB 3.0 ports and even a FireWire port for those that still utilize this interface. If the UD5 is priced right, we'd expect this to be the most popular model among Gigabyte's X79 boards.

Last, but by no means leas we have the GA-X79-UD3 which is a slightly more basic board, although strange enough beyond the UD7 this is the only board with seven slots and it appears to be able to be kitted out with four x16 cards, although we're not quite sure how the slots are wired. No eSATAp on this model, but at least it has a pair of eSATA ports and support for two rear and two front USB 3.0 ports, all via Fresco Logic chips like the previous models.

You might've noticed that we haven't mentioned the SATA ports on any of the boards and the reason for this is simple, Intel's last minute chipset errata. All boards will as such have two SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps ports, but beyond this we don't really know what Gigabyte will offer. We spotted additional Marvell chips for a pair of extra SATA ports on some of the boards and it's very likely that Gigabyte will add more than just a pair of additional SATA 6Gbps ports to all of its X79 boards. We'll make sure we get a closer look at the new boards come November, as by then Gigabyte should have close to final boards to show us. The missing model that wasn't on display at IDF should be the GA-X79-D3, but we don't have any details about this model as yet.